A color inkjet printer is provided with an ink cartridge assembly as required. Ink of different colors is refilled into different ink cartridges, and all the ink cartridges are mounted on the printer. In order to ensure the normal printing of the inkjet printer and avoid the print error caused by the fact that the ink cartridge is mounted at a wrong position, generally, whether the ink cartridge is correctly mounted at an appropriate position in the inkjet printer must be detected in the process of ink cartridge installation. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating the ink cartridge installation detection in the prior art. As illustrated in FIG. 1, supposing the inkjet printer is provided with four ink cartridges, each ink cartridge is respectively mounted at corresponding ink cartridge mounting position; a correct position corresponding to the ink cartridge a is a position A; a correct position corresponding to the ink cartridge b is a position B; a correct position corresponding to the ink cartridge c is a position C; and a correct position corresponding to the ink cartridge d is a position D.
An ink cartridge chip is provided with a light-emitting portion, e.g., a light-emitting diode (LED) lamp; and a light receiving portion capable of receiving light emitted by the light-emitting portion is disposed on a housing of the inkjet printer. The light-emitting portion of the detected ink cartridge will be turned on; the light receiving portion corresponds to a correct position at which the ink cartridge must be disposed; if the light receiving portion can receive light with light quantity reaching a default threshold at the position, it indicates that the detected ink cartridge has been correctly mounted; and if the light quantity does not reach the default threshold, it indicates that the ink cartridge is not mounted at the correct position and an installation error will be prompted. For instance, as illustrated in FIG. 1, when the ink cartridge b is detected, the light-emitting portion on the ink cartridge b is turned on and emits light, and the light receiving portion corresponds to the correct position B at which the ink cartridge b must be disposed; and if the light receiving portion can receive light with light quantity reaching the default threshold at the position, it indicates that the ink cartridge b has been mounted at the correct position. Subsequently, the ink cartridges a to d are integrally driven by a carriage in the inkjet printer to move along an arrowhead direction as shown in FIG. 1; the light receiving portion corresponds to the position C and the ink cartridge c is turned on; and whether the ink cartridge c is correctly mounted is detected by the above method. The process is continued until all the ink cartridges are detected.
However, in the actual detection process, the case that the ink cartridge is mounted at the correct position but is determined to be not mounted at the correct or appropriate position as the light receiving portion does not receive the light with enough light quantity will usually occur. In the final analysis, the root cause of the above problem is that: in the actual production process, due to unavoidable manufacturing error, the light quantity of light emitted by each LED lamp has difference. Therefore, when the light quantity of the light emitted by the LED lamp of the detected ink cartridge is small, as the emitted light is scattered light, the phenomenon that the light quantity of the light arriving at the light receiving portion does not reach the threshold and hence the light receiving portion determines that the ink cartridge is not mounted even if the ink cartridge has been correctly mounted in place tends to occur.
Moreover, from the viewpoint of the inkjet printer, the inkjet printer can only be adapted to specific ink cartridges and cannot be adapted to non-specific ink cartridges which are not provided with LED lamps and cannot respond to on instructions and the like, and hence the ink cartridge selection range of users can be limited and the use cost of the users can be increased. But from the viewpoint of the specific ink cartridges, the production cost of the specific ink cartridges is relatively high. Moreover, due to the limitation of the factors such as the settings of the LED lamps and the self functions of the chips, the specific ink cartridges are likely to become disposable products, namely the specific ink cartridges will be discarded after used up. Therefore, not only the use cost of the users can be increased but also recyclable resources such as the LED lamps can be wasted due to the discarding of the specific ink cartridges; and the environmental pollution can be easily caused.